Day 10 - Santa Fe, NM to Gallup, NW - 232 miles (1791 miles so far)


We left Santa Fe behind after a bit of lie in and headed south to Albuquerque. Most of the way there was through different reservations and we saw quite a few ‘Indian casinos’ - just like in the Simpsons or something.


Nothing much to note about the drive down but the scenery was lovely, lots of mountains.
We arrived in Albuquerque just before noon and went a bit of a drive about the different areas of town, it seems like a really nice city, lots of nice looking cafes and shops.


We had decided to go to the Route 66 Malt Shop, as recommended by our Lonely Planet book, but this was a mistake. The first sign was that as we entered there was a sticker that said ‘One Big Ass Mistake America’ (Obama in case you are a little slow). The guy that owned it then had conversations with about 3 different customers about politics, gosh! He HATES Obama, the first point was about how Obama hates capitalism and is a bloody socialist. Then they talked about Guantanamo Bay and how shutting it was a bad thing and torture was a legitimate thing to do, he also said they would probably release the terrorists to become New York taxi drivers. His final conversation was about the death penalty, he LOVES it. He also had a minute man flag on the wall. He seriously seemed like some sort of plant. This would have been fine, I quite enjoyed it if I’m honest but the food wasn’t good. I had a grilled cheese sandwich which I’m pretty sure was made with squeezy cheese! It came with potato salad which was pretty rank too. K had a cheeseburger which she says was nice but I’m not convinced. What were good were the milkshakes, in fact they were fantastic. I had a butterscotch shake and K had a peanut butter malt, yum.


Back on the road and we crossed the Rio Grande, which like the Mississippi was brown. All was going well until part of the road was shut off because a big van was on fire. We could not find any way round, which sounds ridiculous but it is true, we tried loads of streets but none of them got us where we wanted to be. So we just kind of hung about at the park next to the Rio Grande, but it was so hot we both got headaches. Eventually we got out of Albuquerque and we were on the road once again.


The landscape changed once again and we got into ‘red rock’ country, it is quite beautiful. We basically drove along side about 100 miles of canyons and mountains. We also passed ‘the continental divide’ which was pretty cool. We stopped at an Indian Trading Post next to it and took some photos. We don’t have as many photos of today though as we were mostly on Native American land where there are strict rules about taking photographs, mostly with people in them but we thought it was better to be safe than sorry.


We took a wee detour into Red Rock State Park which was pretty cool, I had been saying all day that I thought some of the red rocks looked like churches and then the famous one in the park was called Church Rock, so they obviously agree with me.


We are staying in Gallup tonight which is the capital of Native American country, especially for the Navajo people. There are hundreds of shops here selling Native American handcrafts. We are staying in an amazing hotel/motel which is called the El Rancho (www.elranchohotel.com). It has a fancy hotel and a cheaper motel (guess which we are staying in) and its claim to fame is that all the movie stars from ‘the good old days’ stayed here - Katherine Hepburn, Kirk Douglas and Spencer Tracy to name a few. The hotel is very nice with each room having the name of an old movie star that stayed there on the door. The motel is nice too, the room is pretty huge and is decorated nicely.


We went to a really nice place for dinner called Ranch Kitchen which represented the many cultures in this area, New Mexican, (old) Mexican, Native American and (non-native) American. I went for New Mexican and had a stuffed Sopapilla, which as sort of pillowy dough thing which was stuffed with mince and beans and served with guacamole and sour cream. I had to answer the famous New Mexican question for the first time - red or green? Everything here is covered in a sauce made from either red chillies or green chillies, if you want a mixture of both the correct answer is Christmas! K had a BLT, boring! My dinner was fantastic, the red sauce wasn’t too hot thank goodness and K said her BLT was good too.


We are now back at the motel as we need to do some laundry - boo hiss etc. There is no WiFi in the room so I need to take the laptop to the lobby so I can upload this.